24 January, 2012

Sea Hearts/Brides first reviews

Just a few reviews have started to trickle out, getting the world ready for publication day (1 Feb here in Australia, 2 Feb in the UK). The Bookbag, in the UK, says that Brides is

"powerful, beautiful, dangerous, unsettling, truthful, earthy, challenging, poetic, wonderful, absorbing. I can't recommend it highly enough. Margo Lanagan has a unique, uncompromising and lyrical voice and she brings it to the folk myth of selkies in a soaring journey of passion and pain."

And Locus's Gary Wolfe is wonderfully thorough and thoughtful in a review now online here, finishing:

"Lanagan develops, without benefit of an external narrator or sidebar lectures, some sharp insights into female passivity and victimization (at least on the part of the seal-women), male fecklessness and almost helpless self-absorption[...], the complex relationships of parents and children, and the fragile negotiations between community and nature. Except for a few comments from distrustful mainlanders, we learn about Rollrock entirely from within, and for a while we seem to live there. It’s not always a pleasant vacation, but it’s a deeply illuminating one, and Sea Hearts may eventually be seen as some sort of masterpiece."

Also, my nephew says it's a tour de force. *waves to Finn*

Updated: Here in Australia, Sea Hearts will be in the shops next Monday, 30 January.

About Me

I write fiction. My latest novel is Zeroes, the first book of the Zeroes trilogy (YA fantasy), a collaboration with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti. My novel Sea Hearts is published as The Brides of Rollrock Island in the UK and the US. I've also written Tender Morsels and five short story collections: White Time, Black Juice, Red Spikes, Yellowcake and Cracklescape.